Retiring Retirement

The concept of retirement is relatively modern. A pension for workers over 65 was first introduced in Russia in the 1880s; In 1908 Britain passed a law setting up a pension for poor workers who had made it to 70. But in those days, achieving the biblical 3 score years and 10 was no mean feat; the average life expectancy for males was in the 40s in the 1880s and in the 50s at the turn of the century, although admittedly this was artificially lowered by high rates of infant mortality, poor public health and war. But even in the 1930s through the 1950s when most first world countries were setting their social security policies, life expectancy was in the 60s and the expectation was that retirement would be for the minority rather than the majority, and that most retirees would enjoy only a few years of benefits. To be blunt, retirement meant exactly that – a departure from the working world as a preparation for departure from the world in general.



These days nothing could be further from the truth. In Singapore the average life expectancy for males at birth is 78, for females, 83. The retirement age is 62. According to Singstat, if I were to turn 62 this year we could still expect, on average, to enjoy 20 more years of life, 23 if I were female. That’s a lot of golf.